Britain is today battling on new fronts in the foot-and-mouth crisis, as news that more humans may have been infected sparked fresh health worries and dealt a blow to the campaign to woo back tourists.
UK health officials said they were investigating two more suspected cases of human infection, 24 hours after a slaughterman who was sprayed with the entrails from a burst animal carcass became the first suspected victim of the disease in 34 years. Results of the tests are not expected before next week.
The slaughterman, who had been working with infected livestock in the north of England, was "moving a decomposing carcass of a cow and that carcass exploded and the fluid went into his mouth," UK prime minister Tony Blair's spokesman said.
A spokesman for the government's Public Health Laboratory Services (PHLS) declined to give details on where the two new suspected cases were within Britain, or whether they were people who had been working with foot-and-mouth infected animals.
A PHLS official played down the threat of an human epidemic and said it was not likely to be passed from human to human.
"The few cases that there have been in human patients have all been a relatively mild flu-like illness with some ulcerations in the mouth and on the hands. The patients have recovered relatively quickly after a few days with no lasting ill effects," said PHLS official Brian Duerden.
"There is no evidence at all in any previous reports of any human-to-human spread and the few people who got seemed to have got it directly from the animals," he told Sky Television.